Witches Lab

Want to see something wicked? This way! Come!

The creative process can be a fickle beast. Moods, ideas, and circumstances are ever shifting and even the smallest detail can derail a project. For builder Mike Bozza, colour ended up being the detail that nearly left his latest creation, Witches Lab, in the vaults.

Witches Lab is a vibrant, colourful build inspired by a Sketchfab contest. In it, you’ll spot curious and otherworldly machinations that certainly wouldn’t be unexpected in the workplace of a crew of cackling spell-casters.

“The purpose was to create a spooky witchcraft room with cool sci-fi elements,” Mike explains. “At first it was going to be a generic old-looking witch den. It wasn’t until halfway through the project I decided to take a twist on the concept towards what it is now.”

Witches Lab is the first project Mike has finished and shared. “My other creations were never fully complete,” he says. “All were very small and different styles, and the problem was I never had any piece of work that directly represented my skill.”

Every creator goes through the same conundrum when they finally finish a piece of work: Is this something I want to share? Is it good enough? Mike was in an even tighter spot, as he was also concerned that other builders would see his building process as strange.

“With organics, creating life forms, I don't usually map things out the way other organic builders do,” he explains. “I primarily use Voxelsniper when making them. This is not orthodox within the community. A lot of the top organic builders use a series of methods to get proportions down and most of which create some sort of outlining.”

His unorthodox methods resulted in a creation that seems to have a life of its own, one that makes you ponder exactly what nefarious potions have been brewed here. One that turns people into frogs? One that turns frogs into people? One that turns dirt blocks into diamonds? Pfft, if only.

“I think I could see a lot of mystery involved with it,” Mike says of the scene. “Even though it isn't the scariest thing you've ever seen there's definitely something mystical and mysterious about the project where you couldn't help but feel like there's something you have yet to discover about it.”

The more rustic and dull colour scheme of Mike's original design not only dissatisfied him, it nearly halted the project entirely. He spent nearly a year chipping away at it on and off before realising that the key to this project would be a change in the colour palette.

So Mike started thinking outside the box and realised that a solid contrast to the dull colours would invigorate the work. That realisation opened his eyes to other effects he’d be able to implement and it inspired him to work until the project’s completion.

As a result of that flip on colour, Witches Lab gives off a vibe that is much more vividly interesting that it is spooky. Sure, many of the objects in the space seem like they could banish anyone too curious to another realm, but the vibrant dwelling looks like the workplace of witches more into creating a kaleidoscopic mess.

Mike says developing Witches Lab has given him a higher appreciation of the potential of the Minecraft community.

“I’ve always known the potential of the platform, but what I really think creating the Witches Labs showed me is the potential of young individuals like myself.

“Not only have we attained skill like this from the ground up but we also were able to take the Minecraft platform and foresee more than just building box houses and hotels... not that there's anything wrong with that; that is pretty fun too!”

Great artists learn from their works and Mike definitely took something from this process. "Any ‘decent’ idea can turn into something great," he says. "even if it's built on with similar ideas, so long [as] you work hard and see it through.”